Freshly reburied Storm zombies burst up out of graves again

Fearful bot-plague returns in fake e-card scam?

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Security watchers have spotted a malware-seeded spam run that bears all the hallmarks of a new generation of the infamous Storm worm.

If verified, the campaign will represent the return of a strain of malware that was endemic between January 2007 and April 2008 before falling into disuse. The worm may have been a victim of its own success, with the cybercrooks behind the malware drawing too much attention to themselves due to the sheer volume of spam their network of compromised hosts was generating.

The new spam campaign, which appeared shortly before the start of the year, poses as a holiday e-greeting card. Users who click on the link are redirected to domains that attempt to trick the unwary into installing a fake Flash player under the guise that this is necessary to view a greeting.

Fast flux techniques are used to revolve the location of domains associated with the attack, according to an analysis by the Shadowserver Foundation. The Foundation notes that the attack bears the stamp of the Storm/Waledac botnet, who have presumably been living the Russian cybercrime equivalent of Michael Corleone's trip back to Sicily in Godfather II for the last two years.

This theory is based on the general tactics of the attack rather than analysis of similarities between the latest (presumed) generation of Storm and previous incarnations of the infamous malware. ®